Ten Thousand
by Ollen70
Summary: Sooner or later you'll put your life back together. Right now, it's just about finding the pieces. Cloud ponders what's left. Second person POV.


Ollen70: I absolutely never write in second person, because it's so hard to pull off, and I don't have any illusions that I might have managed to this time. Just the same, I'd love to hear what you think. Minor warnings for subject matter.

Disclaimer: FFVII doesn't belong to me. I mean no offense to its creators by writing this. No money is being made from this story.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

And when you sleep, you find your mother in the night,  
but she fades just outta sight, so there isn't any sweetness in the dreamin'

And when you wake, the morning showers you with light,  
and it makes you feel alright, but it's just the same hard candy  
you're rememberin' again...

Counting Crows, Hard Candy

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Final Fantasy VII - Ten Thousand Pieces

You wake and you're surprised at just how different the air feels. Every time you're surprised and how cold it can be and still not feel all that bad. Of course, you're in a better place now that you have been for a long time, and you realize that. Things weren't this good the first time through.

Around you is a barrier of warm white, barely a few inches thick since you've somehow thrown off the covers, and all that you have on is a layer of sheets wrapped so tight around your body you're not sure if you'll ever make it out. It's not like you don't have the time to spare, though. There's really no hurry, and even though you sit up, looking at yourself in the mirror on the antique dresser across the room, you know you'll probably lie back down at least once more.

You were always a morning person - in a way you still are, smirking as you run your fingers through matriculated golden hair, matted a little by sleep but about as erratic as always. It's an odd pattern, dark here, lighter there, changed more by the shifting pool of light you lie in than because of any actual difference in coloring.

Your body bares patterns too, lace-drifting over chest and arm, some due to the gossamer curtains across the window, but... not all. Some of them, you realize once again, won't be going away, not for a very long time. They don't just fade, and even though you don't heal like a normal person, restore materia doesn't do everything, doesn't dull every sting.

The marks don't really bother you that much, though. Not near as much as they used to. They're already a part of you, just like everything else that's happened. You'd almost miss them if they suddenly went away.

You lie here and breathe, and it's like absolution, like forgiveness and grace, except that it isn't. Not really. It's a moment of purity, but moments pass, and you don't know how much further you can go. If you had to ask for a last moment, though, it would be hard to beat this.

You know that you're hiding here. The world will find you, sooner or later, because it always does. You were hiding the first time, but it didn't change anything. When people start to open their eyes, there's nothing you can do but hope the weakness isn't so apparent, that you've somehow been able to mask it better this time than you did before.

At the end, you knew you weren't as strong. Something was missing, the last piece of the facade broke, a porcelain mask that hid you as well as anything could. Without it, how are you supposed to know what you are? There's only so much you can say. The mask broke a long time ago, but it's amazing how long you can delude yourself, once you know how.

Yawning, you pull yourself up further, glancing past shifting drapes at the blinding fullness out past them. You're amazed, some mornings, that the sun can still show its face, after all that happened. It watched and did nothing. You gave everything you had and still feel like you'll never quite be whole. If you cared about fairness, you'd be upset about that.

It feels like someone should be next to you. It would actually be a first, since you were always a little too shy in that area, even for people like Zack, the bottomless well of advice on dating. Just the same, the crests and valleys of white around you could just as easily hide another form, breaking here and there like the sky to allow a flash of bare skin, always dominated by soft folds of flowing cloth, bleak and vast as snowfields.

Could be anyone, really. Could have been her, except that she's gone now, gone some place where you can't follow, not yet. Today, it doesn't feel like she's that far off. You wake up sometimes and you could swear you're almost in her arms and they're so much like your mother's, when you cried out as a child in the night.

It could even be _him, _except that it wouldn't really be right. It wouldn't feel quite like this, because there would be fear instead of repose, an alkaline pulse that keeps you wary when you think about it. You're done writing it off as a possibility, though, because it wouldn't surprise you if it happened. He came back so many times anyway. You're tired of thinking that things are final and then finding out that you're wrong. People don't stay gone forever. He certainly won't.

You think about getting drunk. Think about it a lot, actually, eying a thick brown bottle Cid sent you from his own private stash, and what a gesture it was, especially from him. Too bad it doesn't really work on you. Liquid-fire still, but all you get is a bad taste and this weird rash that drives you crazy for the better part of the day, the same Mako that keeps you close-to-invincible also keeping you from enjoying yourself. Leave it to Hojo to completely miss the point.

Funny thing is, you don't think you'd do it too much anyway, if you could. Or at all, really, because losing control of yourself is about the most unappealing thing you can think of, right up there with keeping a pet Marlboro, or watching Reeve dance. You're closer to being you now than you have been in a very long time, and that's good.

You can hear what Zack would say, if he ever heard that one out loud. _Yeah, way to go there, Spike. Our lil' thinker... _rough hands cool against your scalp, mocking, but not really unwelcome. For Zack, boundaries were nonexistent. You'd let him do whatever he felt like, especially now, because if anyone deserves to have free reign with you it would be him. And yet he might not even have been bothered, when you lost his name inside yourself and his face became synonymous with your own.

Zack was your brother. Well, no, Zack was more of your everything, and the only face that comes before his, _ever, _is Aeris's, and that sweet, knowing smile she gave so easily. Your mother's is the third face you see, and sometimes it takes awhile to see clearly. You used to worry that you were losing her, when you could still remember who you were, kept trapped in Hojo's vials for so long. And now she's back, hair in a brown bun but shot through with gold like pieces of wire, made of sunlight and always wispy, never quite pinned down all the way.

_His _ face, of course, will always be very close to the surface. You wouldn't expect anything else, after he invaded your dreams and your thoughts, pulled through each part of your personality like drawers to be emptied on the floor, as if he had every right to dig through whatever he wanted. You laugh, and it's a dry, cracked sound. All he had to do was ask. 

You yawn, pulling yourself up out of the sheets again. Room service ought to be here pretty soon, if the lady at the front desk remembers your order. Since you're what, one of maybe three guests, you don't think it should be a problem.

It's ok to indulge yourself a little. God knows you have enough Gil, even after splitting it with everyone else and giving a lot of what you had left to people who needed it more. Most of the time you get things for free anyway, because everyone knows who you are even when you don't want them to and everyone thinks it's a wonderful gesture to refuse to take your money when you try to pay. You think it's just annoying. How close have you come to making a scene about it? At least three times? Four, if you count that whole fabrege Chocobo egg incident in Junon...

Everybody still stares, whether they recognize you or not, and it's just one more thing you have Hojo to thank for. You'll be an oddity wherever you go, never completely able to touch the world the way an average person might. Not that you're above average. Losing Zack's identity taught you that - you're just as vulnerable as everyone else, you hold just the same faults, but they're bigger, easier to see when they finally split open.

That morning, in the shower, you take your time, spread out under the burning fall like you've already died, heat tracing new designs over the left side of your chest while the right is still pale, ridged with bumps from where the chill passes over it. You turn, and the patterns move again, trading places, one side numb and the other blazing. It's relief, even if it hurts right now.

You have traditions, little things you've picked up to help get you through, not sure if you came up with them on your own or if they're someone else's and you're just borrowing again. A few of them must have been. Like shaving. You do it every morning knowing there's never been so much as a stray whisker on your lip. Chances are you took it from Zack, just like a lot of things. Giving anything back now feels very close to a wasted gesture, but you do it anyway because he mattered so much, because you might be the only one left who remembers him now, and _God, _why did he have to go? Why do they _all_ go?

Today's one of your days for self-pity. They aren't all like this, thank God. This world can't handle too many more people going crazy. Sometimes you really are happy, but it's hard to hold on to an emotion you aren't feeling right now, and you wish you'd paid more attention at the time, to finally give yourself some memories that keep your warmer, for once. 

Is it wrong to miss _him? _Because you do. By now you're convinced that _thinking _ about it is wrong, and then you go and do it anyway, repeatedly, . It was better when you didn't have time to think when everything had to be instinct or death and it's weird how much you wish you could go back to that, back to when he was your idol.

You shake your head, watching as drops fall crystal-fine from your shoulders down across your chest, leaving silk trails that you slap at to stop the vague itch they leave. You'll only admit to yourself - and only when you're sure you're alone - that he never stopped being that to you. You wonder if that makes you a horrible person, after all the things he did to the world and to you and all the things he took away.

A best friend, a beautiful girl who loved you... hell, your home, most of your identity, five years of your life. You have _more _than every right to hate him. So why have you decided not to? There's no answer, except that everything else is so heavy right now and you dont need something else to carry with you. Hatred weighs even more than obligation.

He didn't even touch you in the last fight, before you struck, but God, he blew straight _through _ you. Your edges are still jagged because of it. You haven't filtered the good from the bad yet - aren't sure what pieces you should keep. You've got awhile to figure it out, though.

From your window you hear a dull roar and cinch up your towel before going to take a look. No sense in scaring the maid to death if she walks in and you've left it on the bed. Once was enough. In the distance you see the cause of the noise as it drops gracefully past the bluffs in the distance.

The Highwind had been completely refitted in the first few weeks of the recovery, once Midgar started back on its feet. Scarlet, it seems, is finally good for more than just kicking puppies and tripping old ladies, and the ship looks better than ever because of it. You'll never tell Cid that, not after how much he moans about the new controls and the loss of his detail paint job after the refit.

He's surveying the area, running teams back and forth from the ancient city, looking for new ways to coexist now that Mako is a thing of the past. He'll be back for you in a week, but the look in his eyes tells you it should probably be more like two or three, and that's just fine with you. This was his idea. Somehow, you'll have to make it up to him.

You lay back across the sheets, your body still damp and towel around your waist not enough to keep the dampness from the bedding below you, but you don't care. You're comfortable.

Cid probably expected you to spend your time snow boarding or hunting out the hot springs, and otherwise enjoying the more touristy aspects of Icicle rather than just sitting in your hotel room brooding all day. It strikes you that Cid ought to know you better than that by now. You might go out tomorrow, or maybe the day after. It strikes out, out of nowhere, that you're going to have to get used to thinking about the future, now that you _have _one.

Everybody called you a hero. They say heroes fade, that they only appear when they're called, and you wonder if there's a resting place where they go in the meantime, some conference room somewhere where they all hang out in big leather chairs and drink martinis and wait to be needed. If nothing else, you're sure you could find a nice cave and hang out with Vincent for forty or fifty years, if you ever get the urge.

You don't think it'll come to that. It's good to feel pain because you want to this time, instead of because no one's giving you another choice. You can hurt today, and be a little better tomorrow, and think things through a day at a time and God, it's good to know that there _will be _a tomorrow, no matter how bad things get. If nothing else, you were given that, and that says a lot.

fin


End file.
